Virginia's Public Square
Virginia's Public Square
The 416-page appeal from the Republican speaker of the Virginia legislature prods the U.S. Supreme Court to consider “paradigmatic” errors made by the district court in their decision to declare 11 House districts unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered.
Come all ye who seeketh to followeth the st’ry of the House Democrats and the quest to bewray the myst’rious mapeth mak’r.
More questions are surfacing as Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates rolled out their “new and improved” legislative map last week, which alters 29 of the state’s 100 districts. After the release there was bipartisan criticism, with House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Page) calling it a “hypocritical partisan power grab,” and Delegate Stephen Heretick (D-Portsmouth) taking to floor to call the redistricting attempt a “self-serving, political power grab. It’s gerrymandering in response to gerrymandering. It’s tit-for-tat. It’s, in the immortal words of baseball great Yogi Berra, ‘it is deja vu all over again.'”
Recently, two top Democrats were questioned by the House Privileges and Elections committee about who exactly drew the new district boundaries. However, it seems that the party that drew lines, allegedly, doesn’t even know who did it.
And so beginneth the tale.
When questioned by Gilbert on who drew the new map, Delegate Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), who is the patron of H.B. 7001, the bill to redistrict nearly one-third of the Commonwealth, said it was a “collective effort…I don’t know…the exact names…of the individuals.”
He then turned to Minority Leader David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) to take over answering the questions. Though, it didn’t get any better. In fact, it left the audience more confused.
“I have seen these maps,” Toscano said.
“We started with people…we had some consultants out of Washington, and we had other people who had map software, and we started movin’ precincts around, and as you move precincts around there’s a ripple effect and they go out into different districts. So, that’s how the map got produced,” he answered.
When asking about the mystery map makers, Gilbert asked Bagby: “Who would ‘they’ have been taking to, to express those concerns about racial issues?”
Bagby answered, “the map drawer.”
All ye who wisheth to traveleth through the labyrinth, tis furth’r than thee bethink. Timeth is sh’rt to expose the mapeth mak’r.
When Gilbert asked Toscano if he had “been on some of those calls,” which presumably was for Democratic input on the making of the new map with this mystery map maker or map drawer, the minority leader said, “I might have been on some of those calls.”
He added, “Ultimately, the map drawer…that person is in a better position to tell somebody the answer to the question.”
The mapeth mak’r knoweth all.
Jumping into the conversation, Delegate Mark Cole (R-Stafford) then asked: “Would it be possible for us to get a list of map drawers as you called them.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Toscano said bluntly.
Who so dareth bewray the mapeth mak’r?
“Look, we have a map,” Toscano responded while smirking. “If you don’t like the map, either you amend it, or you vote it down.”
The situation surrounding the saga of the mystery map maker is reminiscent of a fictitious story that would be featured as a “whodunit.” Even with members of their own party denouncing the re-drawing, one would think that the least that could be done would be to reveal who actually drew the new legislative map. That is, of course, if the Democrats know who did it – or maybe a random online map generator is to blame.
Did Shakespeare write his own plays? Who shot Tupac? What is covefe? Who drew the Democrats’ map? These are the toughest questions one must consider.
This week, Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates rolled out their proposed changes to the boundary lines of 29 legislative districts after a federal court ruled that House districts in the Richmond metro area and in Hampton roads were “racially gerrymandered.” Following the release, Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Page) railed against the Democratic plan saying “it’s clear that this is [a] hypocritical partisan power grab that would fail to pass legal muster.”
On Thursday, Delegate Stephen Heretick (D-Portsmouth) took to the House floor during the special session in Richmond, not to fight against the claims of Republicans, but to uphold them.
“Over the past several weeks, too many backroom conversations about redistricting have been held, out of the public eye, and with no transparency whatsoever,” Heretick said.
The delegate said that situations surrounding the Democratic-led re-drawing of the state’s districts exudes the “time dishonored tradition of gerrymandering districts, that allows politicians to pick their constituents, not the other way around.”
People are “fed up with corrupt political culture,” he proclaimed.
Heretick explained that House legislators must “lead the commonwealth out of this gutter…as we approach our 400th anniversary as a legislature.”
Elected in 2015, Heretick was endorsed by OneVirginia2021, a non-profit organization advocating for a non-partisan redistricting in Virginia. Senator Emmett Hanger (R-Augusta) was also endorsed by the group.
Speaking on the necessity to put constituents ahead of politics, Heretick added that the statehouse must “act without more partisan rancor to demonstrate to this nation, to this Commonwealth, and to each citizen we serve – by our actions and not more mere empty words – what we actually mean by the ‘Virginia Way.'”
Heretick said: “We have the opportunity to carve out a legacy which will stand as a shining testimony to the power of what good men and women – on both sides of the aisle – can do when they put this Commonwealth ahead of petty, partisan politics.”
The Hampton Roads area representative then charged to Speaker of the House Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) that the redistricting plan forward by Democrats is, in fact, the “hypocritical partisan power grab” that Gilbert spoke of just days before.
“Mr. Speaker, the proposed redistricting map we’ve seen today goes well beyond anything that the federal court has directed us to do – it’s [a] self-serving, political power grab. It’s gerrymandering in response to gerrymandering. It’s tit-for-tat. It’s, in the immortal words of baseball great Yogi Berra, ‘it is deja vu all over again.'”
He added, “It doesn’t settle any scores, it creates new ones.”
For Heretick, a “non-partisan, independent redistricting” plan is needed to better represent the legislative map that governs politics and policy in Virginia.
“The time has come to finally bury this dinosaur of political corruption we all know as gerrymandering,” he said.
Alluding to similar sentiment within the Democratic caucus, Heretick said that “there are many on my side that feel as I do and are ready to stand for this principal over politics.”
Ending his speech on the floor, the Portsmouth delegate said the state legislature needs to “finally, finally make the monumental patriotic act of looking gerrymandering squarely in the eye – calling it out for what it truly is – and establishing genuine redistricting reform, and drawing districts that actually serve the Commonwealths of the citizens of Virginia.”
The map revealed by House Democrats on Wednesday shows changes in 29 of the Commonwealth’s 100 legislative districts, causing the GOP leadership to rail against the revamped boundaries.
State lawmakers will come back to Richmond at the end of month to redraw the legislative districts. Meanwhile, the GOP is filing paperwork to the Supreme Court to have the lower court’s ruling overturned.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring forgets that favorable judgement has a price in the world of politics.
Throwing cold water on the project, new research from UCLA and Yale suggest that independent redistricting doesn’t improve competition within districts.